[教育学]新编汉英翻译教程第二版课时PPT.pptVIP

Chapter 5Context and Translation 1. Definition of context In a narrow sense, context refers to the words, phrases and sentences in which a word is used. This is what is known as linguistic context, which may be a paragraph, a whole chapter and even an entire book. And the physical, social and cultural setting, etc. are known as non-linguistic context. Chinese linguist He Ziran postulated that context is defined as “the environmental verbal communication depends on”. It includes: (i) linguistic context: words, phrases and sentences preceding or following a certain utterance; (ii) social context: the objective environment in which the addresser produces and the addressee interprets an utterance, such as settings for communication, the status of and the relationship between the addresser and addressee, their social and backgrounds; (iii) cognitive environment: any experiences, background knowledge or other which contribute to communication and cognition(何自然, 1997:210). 2. Functions of context 2.1 Interpretive function Interpretive function refers to the explanations and illustrations to some language phenomena in language using. It combines the situations that the event happens with the co-conditions of surroundings together and offers us a general expression and the prediction of understanding and then narrows down the choices according to the situation, and then identifies the one that is most suitable. Men: Hey! What are you doing up my roof? Simpleton: When your wife invited me to supper, she said the dinner would be on the house. “On the house” in English is an idiom which means “free of charge”. 2.2 Restrictive function Restrictive function refers to the influence of context on language application and language study. From the broad sense, this function may influence the whole nature, the human society and the culture. And from the narrow sense, it may influence a sentence, a phrase or even a word. Restrictive function is one of the major